04 October, 2016

US suspends bilateral contact with Russia over Syria

Cold
War 2.0

Washington
has “suspended” bilateral contacts with Moscow over the Syrian
crisis, the US State Department said. US officials had threatened for
a week to withdraw from the Syrian peace process, after the latest
ceasefire negotiated by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary
of State John Kerry collapsed amid bloody fighting.

While
contacts between US and Russian military to “deconflict”
encounters between their aircraft in Syrian skies will continue, the
US is withdrawing personnel that was dispatched for the purpose of
setting up the Joint Implementation Center (JIC) for the ceasefire,
agencies reported citing the State Department.

There is
"nothing more for the US and Russia to talk about"
in Syria, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on
Monday.

The JIC
would have been located in Geneva, Switzerland, with the purpose to
coordinate military cooperation and intelligence-sharing between
Russia and the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly
ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria.

Washington
has dragged its feet on setting up the JIC, however, with State
Department spokesman John Kirby telling reporters on September 16
that its establishment was contingent on humanitarian aid reaching
Aleppo, while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Joseph Dunford, told lawmakers the US had “no intention of
having an intelligence-sharing agreement with the Russians.”

On Monday,
Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow’s participation
in a program for disposing of plutonium from decommissioned nuclear
warheads, citing “the radical change in the environment, a
threat to strategic stability posed by the hostile actions of the US
against Russia, and the inability of the US to deliver on the
obligation to dispose of excessive weapons plutonium under
international treaties.”